Travis Early, 23, said he has a part time job, a mental illness and makes just enough money that his monthly federal food assistance is around $10 a month.

He fills up a box with food at the new River Place food pantry on Euclid Avenue.

“We thought River Place would be like every other pantry we've ever opened. Thought they would have 1,000 clients by end of the first year. We saw 900 clients in the first three weeks," said Sarai Rice, executive director of DMARC.

That’s just part of the story. In September 2012 the entire DMARC Pantry Network served 8,712 individuals. In September 2015, they broke an all-time record for any month with over 15,000 people served.

Rice said one reason for the spike is River Place, which has drawn from the immigrant population in the surrounding neighborhood, older adults who use the federal supplemental food program next door and the bus stop at the front door.

“We literally hit a sweet spot, and what that has meant is people who had need but no access all of a sudden have access and that site has just skyrocketed,” Rice said.

The success of River Place has proven the theory that if services are taken to where people who need them are living that numbers will spike.

“Not everybody can get to a food pantry,” said Polk County Supervisor Angela Connolly. “We needed to bring the pantries to them and that's where we came up with the idea of a mobile food truck."

A mobile food truck is part of a $10 million fundraising campaign that kicked off this month. It will be a pantry on wheels, taking food into underserved parts of Polk County on a regular schedule.

Connolly said the mobile food pantry truck will likely cost around $100,000. She hopes it hits the road early next year.